About
Gretchen Andrew hacks systems of power with art, code, and glitter. She is known for her unique merger of traditional mediums and strategic information technology.
Works
Watson Facetune Portrait
GRETCHEN ANDREW
2024
Huile sur toile
In her Facetune Portraits series, Gretchen Andrew - who first gained attention in the art-activism scene by hacking Google’s search engine - explores how artificial intelligence is now shaping beauty standards.
The artist reproduces photographic portraits of celebrities in oil paint. While the paint is still wet, she has a robot, guided by the digital beauty app Facetune, trace with a brush the modifications suggested by the algorithm. The resulting rough strokes and smudges allow Gretchen Andrew to denounce the homogenisation of beauty standards in the digital age, as well as the tension between who we are and who we are told to be. More broadly, the artist highlights the power structures - in this case algorithmic ones - that determine what we see, read and hear.
“I reveal the invisible scars left by social media.”
Work presented as part of the “Human Inside” exhibition at Galerie Artverse, Paris, 2025.